


The World Is Flat

by half_sleeping



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-07
Updated: 2009-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_sleeping/pseuds/half_sleeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hetalia/Discworld, or more accurately Hetalia!Discworld</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Is Flat

The young man sitting in the cell is grinning, a little brightly and a little blindly, his limbs stretched out and as at home in this place as he would be- well, home. He was taken in for being in a disturbance last night; they get two or three like him across the watchhouses every day.

Vimes glares at him and wonders why _this_ hooligan of all hooligans has mandated a request from Vetinari to escort him up to the palace- and it _was_ a request, not a command, not a suggestion, merely a casual aside that there is someone the Watch has whom he would like to see.

He isn’t young, now that Vimes can see it closer. He’s not old, but that isn’t exactly the same. He’s not handsome, either, though the smile is good at faking it, and Vimes flicks through every single criminal he’s ever collared in his life because the young man is familiar, not safe or comfortable but _known_ , known like Vimes knows the street cobbles under his soles.

“Hank?” he growls at the civilian. The paper says ‘ank” as far as he can make out; the officer in charge must have had the ponderously literal approach to spelling, which is, ‘if it sounds right it is right.’

“Ankh,” corrects the young man. Somehow it’s not an accent; he’s clearly pure Morporkian all the way through. “The boss sent y’down, then?” His smile is the glint of the guild’s weathervanes turning in the wind and sun, his eyes are the shadows of the alleys in the shades, dark and deep. His stench is that of the Ankh in full summer.

And Vimes _scorches_ his memory for who would call Vetinari _boss_.

.0.

Granny Weatherwax makes up her pickles, and Nanny Ogg her honey, and Magrat, her herb bundles, bringing them up alongside her baby in a sling. Agnes, here for the first time, brings a box of Teatime Assortment, nervously. They find a cottage just as desolate and inhospitable and overgrown as Granny’s- more so, for this one doesn’t have Granny’s pilgrims beating their way to her door in times of need. No one else would build their house on gnarly ground.

Lancre has the kettle on, water boiling. She doesn’t take visitors usually and tells her Queen so, that Verence had better watch out for all these new-fangled ways and Granny that she should be careful of the old arrangements.

She holds young Esme, carefully but surely, and smiles at the princess.

“I thought she’d be older,” said Agnes frankly when they left.

“Old enough, that’s what we all are,” says Nanny cheerfully, and a bird starts to sing behind them.

.0.

 _Why not a barbarian Emperor_ , thinks the Agatean Empire, he’s had those and more and others, as well, even while the will of the people screams through his veins. Cohen has left him, though. The Empire is not surprised that he has left them; only that he has not done so while dead.

Twoflower blinks at him behind the circles of glass.

 _An insurance agent for an Emperor_ , thinks the Empire, and welcomes him politely.

The thumping in his temples eases somewhat. The voice of the people does not.

.0.

Lady Margolotta searches. She’s seen what Vetinari has done, will do, with his nation, with Ankh with his clever hands and cleverer brain and ambition reaching for the sky. Uberwald can do that, _be that_ , be mostly peaceful and relatively bloodless and _prosperous_ , not a thousand small kingdoms squabbling over inches of border. Frankly, she’s amazed that there is one Uberwald at all.

It’s not quite a hunt she orders, but Uberwald feels hunted nonetheless.


End file.
